EnergyAustralia backup disaster stuns Gartner

EnergyAustralia's recent backup catastrophe was beyond belief and should never have happened, according to a Gartner analyst. In January ZDNet Australia exclusively reported that EnergyAustralia was scrambling to restore critical data lost as a result of backup failures that went undetected for several months.

EnergyAustralia's recent backup catastrophe was beyond
belief and should never have happened, according to a Gartner
analyst.

In January ZDNet Australiaexclusively reported that
EnergyAustralia was scrambling to restore critical data lost as
a result of backup failures that went undetected for several
months. The fault was detected last December when a server
problem caused data loss at a number of EnergyAustralia offices,
including the company's Sydney HQ.

Gartner managing vice president of its global storage team, Phil Sargeant, this week said he found the backup
catastrophe "astronomical", and had certainly not heard of
the same problems occurring at other organisations.

"I have heard of [businesses] not being able to read media and
therefore can't recover data. Someone must have really taken
their eye off the ball," he told ZDNet Australia in an
interview.

Sargeant said that sophisticated reporting mechanisms
available today could indicate whether a backup had been
successful or not. Someone was certainly at fault for not
checking those indicators, he surmised.

Both EnergyAustralia and its contractor Fujitsu -- who is
helping with the restoration attempt -- have refused to comment
on their roles in the incident or who was responsible for the
backup procedure.

Sargeant believed that legal implications arising from the
disaster would be defined in any contract that EnergyAustralia
had with its service delivery partner/s.

He said there would be a number of service level agreements
(SLAs) in EnergyAustralia's supplier contracts, giving the energy
specialist a level of guarantee. Sargeant also said that there
would be some penalty indicated if SLAs were not met.

An EnergyAustralia spokesperson said at the time the catastrophe
was made public that legal action against Fujitsu was not being
considered. The utility has made no further comment on the
matter.

When asked recently about its restoration attempt, an
EnergyAustralia spokesperson said: "We revised our restoration
timetable and work is still progressing. For this reason we have
nothing more to add to our previous comments." The restoration attempt was originally to have finished in
January.